


bravery and other such defects

by mortalitasi



Series: a crown of poppies [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Mentions of Slavery, also slavers getting the good ol' slice and dice, backstory time!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 16:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18286073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: One Inquisition, seeking new, mighty, and glorious accommodations to house headquarters. Previous base of operations torched by madman and his dragon under suspicious circumstances.Magisters need not apply.Or: how Nehn Lavellan took a mountain to the head and lived to tell the tale. Also, romance (kind of)!





	1. coming around (and above, and below) the mountain

**Author's Note:**

> i forgot this even existed. whoops.

Her shoulder _pops_ out of place when Corypheus lifts her.  
  
No dramatic buildup or anything—just _pop_. Like a sword sliding out of a sheath. She's way past the point of feeling pain normally, so, she supposes she should be grateful. He's looking at her—glaring at her, really. The skin of his hand is leathery, crisscrossed with scars beyond counting, the bones underneath malformed and stretched into the shadow of something wrong. He's the blueprint that all darkspawn draw from. At least they're not as big as he is, because he... is truly very big.  
  
Corypheus has the most underwhelming pair of eyes. They're brown. Nondescript. The kind you'd probably find on a random, criminally average man you'd pulled off the street. That's what they are—human. Which is why they're so terrifying. This thing, this tall, towering nightmare of twisted sinew and pride—it used to be human. Now he stands over men of all races, changed, changed forever. What was it that he saw that angered him so? What was it that he saw that _turned him into this_?  
  
“The Anchor is permanent,” he's saying, full of disgust, warped mouth frowning. The timbre of his voice rumbles through her chest, echoing. “You've _spoilt_ it with your stumbling.”  
  
She laughs, and it sounds brittle, raspy. Broken. “I never was very good with new toys.”  
  
He doesn't speak, just shouts a garble of unintelligible syllables strung together with rage; he swivels around, taking her with him, and throws her across the clearing. She hits the trebuchet back-first. Something cracks on impact, but she's too tired to complain, to register it properly. Corypheus is like every nightmare she had as a child come to life—those distant figures of darkness with burning eyes and arms long enough to scrape the ground that always prowled at the edge of her dreams, stalking, waiting, _slithering_.  
  
His dragon is a nightmare, as well, too hard and too sharp for this world. Dragons, _real_ dragons, are wild and beautiful, and they talk in fire and ice and lightning and leave piles of shit behind them that are big enough to fill a cave with. They're _alive._ This fevered copy that Corypheus has conjured forth for himself is just a smeared insult of corrupted whispers; a misplaced, sick litany that's been forced into a creature whose natural splendor outdoes even the greatest of riches. It's an offense, one that rings in the empty spaces of who she is like nothing she's ever felt before. He took it, _tainted it_. It has to die.  
  
It's more instinct than anything that causes her to reach for the longsword sitting at her feet. She knows, logically, that if Corypheus sics his beloved pet on her, she'll need a much bigger, much _pointier_ implement to keep that kind of a threat at bay. But there's an idea in her head. Or part of it. It just needs some time to form. The sword makes sense. It ties into something else. She just doesn't know what. It's bitterly cold, and night is falling fast. Her breath swirls around her in clouds of quickly-dispersing white.  
  
“And you... I will not suffer even an unknowing rival,” Corypheus declares. The dragon rears up to its full height behind him, the gleaming points of the reflections in its eyes fixed upon her. “You _must die_.”  
  
She blinks. He asked nicely. Ish. Sort of. And here she'd thought he was just all bellow and no manners. Inhaling is painful. Definitely bruised (or broke) some ribs. Great. Her legs protest when she tries to push herself up into a sitting position. Joints are screaming. Head is swimming. All in good order, clearly. She's half-convinced she's hallucinating when she catches sight of a streak of flame climbing the sky, marking the dark horizon with light and smoke. _Cullen's signal._ Then they're safe. He's safe. She hopes.  
  
The dragon takes a step toward her, the weight making the very ground beneath it jar and tremble. It has to be now. Now or never. Make them think she's going to fight. She only needs a few seconds.  
  
“Your arrogance blinds you,” she says as she stands, leaning back heavily against the trebuchet. Her tongue is leaden, dry. It tastes like ashes. “Good to know. If I'm dying— _it's not today_.”  
  
She feints forward, longsword at the ready, and the dragon hisses, tensing protectively, but all she does is muster the last of her failing strength—enough to kick the crank of the trebuchet into spinning loose of its safeguard. The contraption shrieks, metal straining against wood, and the resulting shock from its firing nearly knocks her clean off her feet again. The avalanche she's induced has already begun by the time she flings the longsword aside and forces herself to run. She hears the boulder the trebuchet launched hit the mountainside—hears the thunder of displaced earth, the enraged keening shriek of the false dragon.  
  
Just a little bit further. Her legs bumble, almost fail, but she forces them to work, to move, to _keep going_. There's a way out, and she has to reach it.  
  
Snow whirls around her, a blinding vortex of sharp and cold. She lifts her arms to shield her face, though it ultimately makes no difference. She may die here, but she's opposed to the idea, mostly because lying down and dying would mean humoring this gigantic dehydrated prune of a lunatic. Nehn wants to live, if only to spite him.  
  
A gust of wind lashes at her back as she goes over the edge of the scaffolding and careens into empty space. She falls into darkness, coattails streaming behind her, and through her watering eyes she sees a glimmering floor—the promise of ice, not far away, and she's hurtling in its direction.  
  
_This is going to hurt._


	2. while in the dark, she dreamt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a look into the past.

_memories drift by, reflections on water…_  


* * *

 

They come at night, when she is watching the children play in the open space by the lake, the lights of the campfire and moon mingling on its surface, white and gold.  
  
Her first hint is the quiet, the lull in the sound of the crickets in the brush, and then the crack of a twig. Sloppy. She leaps to her feet, taking the greatsword at her side with her. The grass is cool on the parts of her soles the leggings do not cover, and her toes curl into the ground as she scans the bushes. She waves a hand at the young ones—Tareth and Elian, siblings, girl and boy, the furthest from the group—and motions them to come closer. They're starting to edge nearer... and then the bushes part.  
  
“Get behind me!”  
  
The children cry out and duck, streaking past her, and cries of alarm rise up throughout the camp.  
  
A man lunges out from the foliage. His armor is fine, green-gold—veridium—and there's a double-headed eagle emblazoned on the breastplate. His helm is impersonal, featureless, smooth, with a continuous long slit for the eyes and a harshly-shaped mouth. He hefts a shield at her. The eagle, again, flashing, taunting. She launches herself at him and crushes the pommel of her greatsword into the center of his sternum. His breastplate dents, ruined, and he yelps in agony as he falls to his knees.  
  
“Slavers!” Nehn roars, bringing the full weight of her gauntleted fist down on his head. It flattens him and he falls face-first to the ground, twitching. “ _To arms_!”  
  
The hunters posted on the perimeter of the camp close ranks, and then—the underbrush around her starts to _swarm_ with soldiers, all outfitted in the same kind of armor as the unfortunate fellow underneath her foot. She fights off the first two with nothing but her hands, and lops the head off of another with single measured swing of her blade. That makes some of them scatter. In the gloom they look the same, indistinguishable from one another, mad-eyed and evil, with sheets of steel for faces that wink and gleam in the firelight. Inhuman. Monstrous.  
  
A soldier roughly her height tries to dart by, but Nehn swings again and catches them across the back, splitting open mail and gambeson and reaching the flesh below. It hobbles them, and their helm goes crooked, getting displaced. Cropped blonde hair. Strong cheeks. Brown eyes. Woman, not a day over thirty. The Tevinter looks at her with venom reserved for the gunk at the bottom of a shoe that's walked through a scrapheap before attempting to cut her throat, a move that Nehn blocks by the grace of quick wits and quicker hands. The daggers glance off the flat of the greatsword, sparks flying from the contact, and the slaver is knocked back by the parry.  
  
A well-placed arrow some hunter shoots saves Nehn the trouble of having to finish her off. It thuds into the back of the slaver's skull, its bladed head buried deep, and the Tevinter woman drops like a weight, dead. Did she have children? She might have. Do children in Tevinter question the way things are at all? Where the people who shine their shoes and make their meals and take care of their houses come from? How do you even _explain_ that to a kid?  
  
“Oh, yes, mummy just nipped over the border to get herself some elves and urchins, because that's what normal people do! Slave fifteen, pass me the skillet!”  
  
Or maybe there is no explanation needed, not much of it—because it's a way of life, and you don't question that, sometimes after you're done growing, too. And that's the scariest part.  
  
Nehn retreats while the others suppress the tide of slavers by way of arrow. The rest of the hunters are emerging now from behind the aravel, swords and shields at the ready, all weapons she's had at least one hand in making or repairing—Marten's ironbark spear was a pain to temper and bind, and he kept complaining about the way she wrapped the grip. Had he continued to complain, she'd probably have wrapped _him_ for good measure. He'd have a difficult time sweet-talking the lads and lasses if he were swathed from head-to-toe in reedweave.  
  
She wonders how they look to the slavers, how it all looks—the long shadows of the aravel and blacked-out silhouettes of the hunters defending their home in the gloom. The campfires burn for the benefit of the younger ones, for warmth, for comfort, though every elf in camp can see in the dark as well as if it were midday.  
  
Fires can be more of a hindrance than a help, a target, if you will, if your opponents are humans, anyhow—most animals are frightened of it right proper, she thinks as she reaches out to snatch a Tevinter to her left. She hurls the man over her side, feeling his fingerbones crack under her vice-like grip, and throws him into the biggest fire-pit near her. _Poof!_ Ash and embers whirl out at her, a cloud of grey and orange, hanging in the air like temporary stars until the wind carries them away and aloft again.  
  
He displaces the rocks surrounding the lip of the pit as he goes down, and he screams in pain as the blaze bites through his armor. She smashes the blunt part of her weapon's hilt into his face to keep him from standing again. By the time the man's come around for a second time, his breastplate is cherry-red, and Nehn can hear the flesh of his palms sizzling like meat on a spit. He shrieks while he dies.  
  
The slavers are splashing through the shallow rim of the lake, knee-high in water that looks like liquid silver, shouting in Tevene, closing in on the camp with the precision of vultures who've caught the scent of carrion. She fells another on her way back to the campfires, slices the man's gut from hip to hip, only yanking the greatsword free when she feels it scrape against the solid mass of her opponent's spine. The length of the blade is gleaming wet and red when she comes to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Breann, the only other elf in the clan able and willing to wield weapons like the one she's carrying at the moment.  
  
Breann has a proud face, weathered by hardship, and the sprawling vallaslin of Elgar'nan adorns her high brow, swirls on her cheeks and chin, blue like her eyes in daylight, black and fearsome in the night. She holds herself with a caution earned through experience—she's easily the tallest in the clan, standing over even most of the men, and her arms are strong enough to lift a halla filly. It was Breann who taught her how to use the greatsword after Father died, how to balance the weight of her own body against that of whatever implement she'd chosen to fight with that day—maul, axe, slicer, warhammer—it all depends on the skill of the person holding onto the hilt, or the haft.  
  
“They'll underestimate you because you're small,” Breann had told her years ago, in another life, resting one wide-palmed hand on her head. “But that's alright. It just means they'll never see you coming.”  
  
The young Nehn of then could hardly picture killing men, or just simply killing, period.  
  
“I'm surprised you didn't lose your head,” Breann yells, and Nehn scoffs, hefting her weapon up.  
  
“It's great to see you unharmed, too.”  
  
“Aye. Look alive!”  
  
They take every comer. Between Nehn's greatsword and Breann's maul, the slavers being funneled between the two bonfires at the fore of the camp have no chance.  
  
Rage is her companion. Rage is her guiding star.  
  
Each time she fells another, and another, and another, she remembers her father, lying under the weeping willow in the summer, split from shoulder to hip, red all around.  
  
She stomps a dagger out of a prone rogue’s hand, grinding her heel into his wrist.  
  
_You took him from me_.  
  
She howls in the unmasked face of a warrior; the sound rises all around them, scaring the nightbirds from their nests in the pines, turning the young warrior’s skin chalk-white with terror. He pisses himself before the end, but there’s no pity in her. It died long ago, under the weeping willow in the summer.  
  
_You took him from me!_


	3. what's new is also frightening

She doesn’t come to all at once, but rather meanders her way back to consciousness.  
  
The first thing she notices is that her ribs no longer ache like a herd of oxen took turns kicking her in the chest. Other observations come to her in a steady trickle: she is warm, on her back in a cot, her wounds have been salved and bound, her shoulder is back in place, and her hair has been neatly braided. She is also wearing nothing but a pair of very ill-fitting, very large breeches, and a swath of linen around her breasts. She doesn’t risk moving her head, though she lets her eyes rove around; she sees only canvas above her, and she can smell the sharp sting of snow and wet gravel. Still in the mountains.  
  
Lanterns light the tent, without and within. She must have been out for hours.  
  
What woke her?  
  
Then she hears it—the murmur of voices just beyond the flap of the haphazard tent she’s been sheltered in.  
  
“Any change?”  
  
“None, Commander.”  
  
A sigh, sad and weary. “Stretch your legs some, Mother Gisele. Do your rounds. I will stay for a while.”  
  
“Very well. Thank you.”  
  
There’s a pause before Cullen actually enters—and the sight of him is welcome, even if the furred ruff of his coat is half-sodden with melted ice and he looks just about ready to keel over. He’s always had some rather spectacular undereye circles, and the stress of losing Haven and the subsequent invasion must not have helped in making them any better. She hasn’t known him for long, but she knows his type, and how he shoulders responsibility for the impossible. The man would blame himself for the weather, if he could.  
  
He trudges over, armor and all, his expression the very picture of all things somber and grim. He—sweetly enough—straightens out the blanket at the foot of the cot before looking up and catching her (open, waiting, and attentive) eye. The strangled noise of surprise he makes is comical.  
  
“Herald!” he blurts, rushes forward, remembers himself, and then draws back. “Maker’s breath—you’re awake!”  
  
She blinks a couple of times, wincing. “I am at _least_ two-sixteenths awake. It’ll have to do.”  
  
“Herald,” he says again, and then sits on the rickety stool that’s been set out next to the cot. It squeaks and creaks rather ominously under his full weight. “How do you feel? Are you in any pain? Do you need anything?”  
  
She tries to laugh— _tries_ being the operative word. It’s more of a pathetic wheeze. “Why, Commander, were you _worried_?”  
  
The joking question wipes every trace of worry from his face, transforming his features into something fierce and almost protective. “Of course,” he answers, without any sort of preamble, without any sort of doubt.  
  
That something, whatever it is, makes her traitorous heart jump and start pounding like she’s back on the mountainside, toppling headfirst into a hole to escape an angry dragon and an overgrown magister. Quick, to the exit.  
  
“Oh,” is her intelligent response. “Well. Considering that I took a mountain to the head, I think I’m doing quite alright.”  
  
“The apostate healed you as best he could,” Cullen replies. His eyes, the color of brandy, amber-brown, are trained on her with exacting focus.  
  
She wishes the cot would simply swallow her up and hide her from his gaze. She’s not used to feeling embarrassed—and she doesn’t much like the experience.  
  
“I’ll have to thank him, then,” she rasps, and moves to sit up.  
  
Cullen is at her side in a flash. He moves pretty fast for someone who’s armored _and_ heavily clothed.  
  
“Herald, no,” he admonishes, forgetting his bashfulness in the flood of necessity. His gloved hands curl around her arms, keeping her in place, burning warm on her skin. “Stay where you are. I will fetch Mother Gisele. You should be seen before you go anywhere.”  
  
She goes stock-still, paralyzed by how close he is. At this distance, she can see the fringe of his fair lashes, and the day’s stubble forming on his very pleasingly-shaped jaw. “I’m not dead, which means I’m fine,” she insists.  
  
His expression crumples, just a little, a change so imperceptible she nearly doesn’t catch it. “You could have been,” he says in a murmur, his grasp tightening.  
  
She’s lost her mind, because she’s thinking about putting her hands on his.  
  
“Cullen…”  
  
He retreats at the sound of his name like he’s been scalded, his mouth drawing into a tight line that pinches the scar on his lip to half its size.  
  
“Mother Gisele,” he repeats, stonily, in a tone that brooks no argument. “ _Stay here_.”  
  
He leaves as quickly as he’d come, disappearing into the night.  
  
Nehn just flops back onto the cot, not caring that the rough move jostles every single open laceration she’s currently in possession of. The pain is familiar. She knows how to deal with pain.  
  
With whatever it is Cullen inspires in her? Not so much.


	4. home is where you can't get invaded

“If this is some elaborate prank to get back at me for asking you if you were allergic to halla, I will be very cross.”  
  
Solas looks back at her, squinting in that way that tells her he’s questioning her intelligence.  
  
“I assure you it isn’t, Herald,” he says, totally monotone and calm. But she’s spent enough time with him to be aware that the question probably rankled him—not because it was a question, but because it brings to mind their first, real, less-than-friendly conversation.  
  
“That’s very good,” she replies, plowing through the snow effortlessly to catch up to him. “Because if it were, I would be forced to throw you off of one of these magnificent Fereldan mountaintops, you know.”  
  
He scoffs at her. “I should like to see you try.”  
  
“Did I hear right?” Nehn asks, lifting a brow. “You don’t think I could? Have you _seen_ my arms?”  
  
He just stares at her, nonplussed, with those keen eyes. Thanks to the morning light, the glare off of the snow, they look more grey than blue right now; they’re one of his nicest features, something about him that stands out, even if he does his best to make himself appear painfully unexceptional.  
  
“My eyes,” he says, like he’s read her thoughts, “are in perfect working order. I simply doubt that you could get close enough to succeed.”  
  
Nehn shakes her head. “Oh, ye of little faith. I’ve hogtied my share of mages, ser. I am a dangerous half-pint.”  
  
If he were easier to goad, he would have rolled his eyes. This, however, is Solas, so he does not roll his eyes, and instead keeps pace with her, wading in the path she’s forged through the snow, loosening the stubborn bits with help from his staff.  
  
“You are, as Corypheus has no doubt discovered,” he agrees amiably.  
  
“Solas, did you just admit to considering me a _half-pint_?”  
  
He actually sighs this time. “You are impossible.”  
  
She snickers.  
  
They make for a funny pair. Solas is dressed in a hefty but comfortable coat lined with bristling fur, though he hasn’t pulled its cowl over his head. The cold of the Frostbacks has reddened his cheeks and nose, lending his usually austere appearance a touch of the affected and mundane. He always looks so distant and detached from it all—it’s good to know there’s blood under his skin, that he can feel the bite of winter and its ice.  
  
Conversely, Nehn is garbed in her trusted dress-tunic with a cloak over the top, but not much else. The cold numbs the cuts that are still healing, and she prefers to go without the clunky boots that the quartermaster keeps trying to get her to wear. Mother Gisele had been almost beside herself with worry about frostbite, but Nehn thinks that most of them forget she’s not human—she’s walked through worse than snow in her leggings. A little chill won’t do anything to her.  
  
“Not that I don’t love the scenery,” Nehn starts, “but I reckon there’s a reason we’re way out here ahead of everyone else. Alone. If you wanted a bit of a one-on-one, you could have just a—”  
  
“ _Herald_ ,” Solas interrupts, giving her a reprimanding look.  
  
“Fine, fine. Does it have something to do with your single, lonely ball?”  
  
He mutters a strange string of Elvhen pejoratives, but it’s too quick for her to make the entire meaning out. “Yes,” he says, with great effort. “It does.”  
  
“I mean, we talked about it last night,” she reminds him. She kicks some snow off the edge of a wickedly sloped rock. “Watch your step.”  
  
“Thank you,” Solas tells her, stepping around it carefully. “We’re almost to the place we discussed. It’s just over this slope.”  
  
“I was under the impression this was about your ball.”  
  
He frowns at her, fiercely. “It _is._ Herald, have you given thought to what I said?”  
  
She stops in her tracks to look him in the eye for the first time since they began this trek. Nehn is used to being the shortest person in any given conversation (unless dwarves are involved, that is), but she finds that metaphorical height is often about how you express yourself in conversation, how you carry your weight—where you decide to throw it, too. A person’s presence can be hundreds of times bigger than their body. Solas is tall for an elf, standing at least a head and a little bit more above her, and while that’s odd, it’s not what she finds most puzzling about him. What she finds puzzling is that he speaks politely—he doesn’t curse very often, either—and presents himself as a teacher, but she always has this sneaking suspicion that he wants to make her feel small.  
  
“Solas,” she says, all hilarity falling away from her like a husk. He blinks at the change, gaze sharpening. “My answer hasn’t changed. I won’t try to destroy the orb. I’ll even give it back to you, if we somehow manage to survive this lunacy. But I won’t hide what it is from people who matter. Lies have never served elvhen and human relations well.”  
  
He appraises her for a moment, and in that moment he looks so tired and ancient that she fears, inexplicably, that he’ll crumble to dust and be borne away by the wind.  
  
“I see,” he finally remarks. “I will have to trust in your sense of judgment, then.”  
  
She gives him a bit of a teasing smile. “Did that hurt to say?”  
  
To her surprise, he returns the smirk. “A little,” he admits.  
  
Nehn chuckles. “Well, come on. Your perfect, promised hideout is just a stone’s throw away.”  
  
He’s right behind her when they cross over to the other side. She has to shield her eyes with an arm for a bit until her vision adjusts to the sudden glare of sunlight, but then it fades, and her stomach drops to her toes.  
  
It’s an entire bloody _fortress,_ just sitting there nestled into the mountainside, with parapets and battlements and a gigantic portcullis that she can easily see in spite of the distance. An entire gorge lies between where they are and the fortress itself, though Nehn spots the paths that must have been used when this place was populated and patrolled. Her military experience doesn’t lie in siege warfare, and she can’t tell a keep from a castle—despite that, even to her untrained eye, this place looks nigh-unassailable, and extremely defensible. If they can successfully bring everyone here… it would be a good start toward a less unsure future for the Inquisition.  
  
The colossal bridge breaching the gorge seems to be serviceable, from this far, anyway. It’s probably doable. She thinks of Cullen, used to holds and barracks, and immediately realizes he’ll be more at home here. And that, for some reason, is important to her.  
  
She turns to Solas, an incredulous laugh bubbling in her throat. “Are you serious?”  
  
“Deathly,” he says, leaning on his staff. He’s amused by her girlish excitement, the complete collapse of her composure—as a result, he’s nearly on the cusp of being comfortable, or genuinely friendly.  
  
“How could you _possibly_ know this was here?” Nehn asks breathlessly. All the air was knocked out of her by the sight of the fortress.  
  
He hesitates, expression closing off again.  
  
She scrambles to fix her verbal slip. “No, wait—let me guess. You saw it in a dream. Yes?”  
  
The tension abates. The line of his shoulders laxens. Solas gives her another one of those almost-smiles. “Yes. A dream.”  
  
“Does it have a name?” she goes on, more carefully now.  
  
“Skyhold,” he says.  
  
“Naturally. _Obviously_.”  
  
She swivels on her heel to ogle at the marvel of Skyhold’s stonemasonry, and so doesn’t notice the apostate watching her.


	5. raid night

Settling into Skyhold is shockingly easy.  
  
She suspects it has more to do with the tireless work of her advisors than personal taste—but she _does_ like the place itself, which surprises her more than anything else. She felt suffocated and imprisoned in Redcliffe Castle (though one might argue that had to do with the megalomaniacal mage running the show, not the architecture), and hasn’t had much better luck with any other keep she’s visited in the last few months since the Inquisition’s conception. Skyhold, so far, has been a pleasant exception. It’s built along elegant lines, seamlessly combining the mountain’s natural formations with ingenious construction. The ceilings, also, are a big part of how comfortable she’s feeling. They’re monstrously tall, tall enough that she doesn’t think they’re ever going to solve the problem of crows roosting in the rafters of the main hall. And she’s fine with that. She loves how open and airy Skyhold is, the sprawling courtyard and the tangled garden, the handsome stables and the hidden underground libraries.  
  
Truth be told, Josephine would be much happier if the newly-appointed Inquisitor did less exploring and more _paperwork_ , but no one has ever accused Nehn Lavellan of being particularly punctual.  
  
Therefore, there’s no real excess of guilt involved in wandering about afterhours, while the majority of the populace is asleep. This is the best time to raid the kitchens: no witnesses, but an abundance of leftovers and day-old bread. Perfect fare for the beleaguered sojourner.  
  
She hums happily to herself as she slips past the oaken door leading to the kitchens. The scents of the crisp alpine night are replaced with headier, earthier things—dried herbs, yeast, barrel-wood, gourds of straining cheese, and the lingering smokiness of an extinguished fire.  Absolutely sublime.  
  
And then she spots the lantern standing on one of the long tables, its flame casting long shadows all around. Someone’s sat at the same table, shoulders hunched. Her elvhen eyesight takes no heed of the darkness, letting her recognize him immediately. It’s Cullen, looking very different from usual in a simple roughspun tunic that’s hanging untucked over a dark pair of trousers. His straw-colored hair is mussed, curling around his ears, like he couldn’t have bothered with combing it back after getting out of bed. Cullen _always_ bothers with his hair—it’s her first sign that something’s amiss.  
  
“Who goes there?” he asks in his unmistakable Commander’s voice. It’s more of a bark than a question.  
  
“Just a pantry thief,” she says, stepping forward into the lantern’s circle of light so he can identify her. She’s gotten better about remembering that none of the people here (save other elves, of course) can see in the dark as well as she and her kin can.  
  
His pale face promptly becomes contrite. “Inquisitor,” he says, all sharpness vanishing. “What are you doing here?”  
  
She takes a seat across him, her eyes drifting across the things laid out in front of him—he’s gathered a cutting board, a serrated bread knife, and a chubby loaf of the sourdough he’s so partial to, but he doesn’t seem to have gotten around to serving himself.  
  
“That’s my line,” Nehn teases. “ _I’m_ a regular around here. Cook mustn’t know. She’ll hang me by my toes if she realizes I’m the culprit behind the great larder heist.”  
  
Cullen’s response is a wan smile. He shifts backward in his seat, retreating from her, but he can’t hide the tremors in his outstretched hands. He clasps them together when he notices her looking at them, though that doesn’t stop the shaking outright. The understanding in her gaze makes him feel wholly wretched.  
  
“Bad night?” she inquires gently.  
  
He stares at the table, unable to meet her compassionate expression head-on. “You could say that,” he mumbles.  
  
He’d confided in her about his decision to stop taking lyrium the first week they’d been at Skyhold. She’d listened, hadn’t interrupted, and taken the situation as well as anyone could be expected to. Moreover, she had left the matter to his discretion, telling him that she knew Cassandra’s judgment to be sound. She had believed his declaration of the Inquisition being his priority, and still does, evidently, since she’s not replaced him—he’s not used to that kind of faith, much less from someone he’s only known for some months.  
  
“If you need anything along the way,” the Inquisitor had said to him, “I’ll be here.”  
  
He just hadn’t thought she would have to make good on that promise so soon.  
  
Nehn wordlessly draws the cutting board over to her side of the table and cuts two healthily-sized slices from the loaf for him. He would never ask for her to do it, so she doesn’t wait. She sets the knife and the loaf aside, and then pushes the cutting board in his direction again.  
  
“I know just the thing,” she says afterward, coming to her feet. “Hold on.”  
  
Cullen watches as she scuttles off in the direction of the larder. She comes back a minute or so later, with some strips of cured ham and an absurd, bristling handful of links of sausage wrapped in oiled paper. This time she drags the stool she’d been using to his side; when she sits, their shoulders are almost brushing.  
  
“Protein is good at settling the shakes,” Nehn explains, laying out the paper next to the bread on the cutting board. “And the grain is good at helping the protein go down easier.”  
  
He reaches for a slice of bread—it’s odd, feeling so sick and so hungry at the same time. But he knows he needs to eat. Without food, everything will just get worse.  
  
Nehn observes him while chewing on one of her claimed links of sausage. This is the first time she’s seen the man out of armor, and without gloves. He has attractive hands that are at least a shade paler than the rest of him—no surprise there, considering that they probably never see the sun. His nails are square, clean, cut close to the skin. One large, thin scar runs horizontally across his knuckles on the right hand. The left has a pinky that looks a little crooked. Probably broke and healed wrong, early in his youth.  
  
“Thank you,” he says quietly, before taking the smallest possible bite of bread.  
  
She grins at him, sharp canines on clear display. “Don’t mention it. I needed some protein of my own, anyway.”  
  
They sit there in silence for a while, as Cullen works his way through a slice of bread, supplementing it with bits of ham now and then.  
  
The lantern flickers, and time goes on. He looks at the Inquisitor in the periphery of his vision. She’s given no indication of discomfort or impatience. For being up and about hours after midnight, she doesn’t look at all tired—her green hazel eyes are bright and alert, her responses timely and appropriate. The thick length of her ginger hair is in a tail that hangs low, almost over the small of her back; her delicately pointed ears are peeking out from behind that curtain of auburn. She’s a lovely woman. But she is also the Inquisitor. His superior. Their leader.  
  
“Were you unable to sleep?” he hears himself ask.  
  
She shrugs. “I’m used to keeping a strange schedule. I was always on night watch back home. Don’t think I’ll ever really shake the habit.”  
  
He’s startled by how closely he can relate to that answer. “I’m much the same,” he confesses, before he can stop himself. “Templars sleep in rotation. Someone must always be awake. I’m… not used to having the entire night.”  
  
“Cheers to the hardworking,” she says, picking up another sausage.  
  
He raises a brow at her pile of her contraband. “Are you truly going to eat _all_ of those?”  
  
The Inquisitor gives him another one of those sly grins. “I won’t tell Cook if you don’t.”  
  
Cullen hides a smile behind a bite of ham. “It’s a deal.”  
  


* * *

 

The very next day, a gigantic, dwarven-made padlock is installed on the door to the larder.


End file.
